Relisten to The Girlfriends S1, Ep 5: The Best Job a Lawyer Could Have
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Hey, listener. In this episode, there are mentions of domestic violence and how it's treated in the justice system. We also take on 18 holes of golf with two poker-playing prosecutors.

If you do listen and are impacted by any of our themes, you can reach out to Know More, a domestic violence charity we've partnered with. They have lots of great resources to help you or your loved ones. You can find them at knowmore.org. That's N-O-M-O-R-E dot org.

In the spring of 1996, Bob had the audacity to call me for advice. It was really strange because I hadn't talked with him in months since our messy breakup. But Bob goes on to tell me that he had met someone, an OBGYN named Janet. And in true Bob style, they were already engaged and due to be married within the next few weeks. He also said that Janet was getting cold feet and he wanted my advice on how to reassure her.

I mean, really, a guy dumps you and then calls you up for advice about his new fiance? Anyway, the reason she was getting cold feet is because in order to register their marriage, Bob had to order a copy of Gail's death certificate. And when it showed up in the mail, Janet was really shocked to read the cause of death as undetermined and in brackets, torso with homicide written and circled underneath. I'll admit I was a little taken back.

I mean, first I'm hearing that he's marrying a woman that he met only a few months before, and then he wants advice on how to tell her about his missing wife. Bob also tells me in this strangest fuck phone call that he's moving to Minot, North Dakota. He's gotten some lucrative job in a hospital up there. So look, anyway, I tell him, tell her the truth, Bob, whatever that meant. And I hung up and immediately reached out to the club.

I mean, in a way, it was really funny, but I also wondered if we needed to tell Janet what we knew. We were around the table at the Mayflower, and Stephanie said, do you think that we should warn her? And I think we just sat with that for a little bit, and unanimously we said no.

I wonder if that would be different today. I might do it different today. If it was today, I don't know if I'd offer that speculation because it was speculation. Mindy's right. We didn't want to go barging into Bob's fiance's life with our theories. You and I know so much more than we ever did back in the 90s. Back then, we were still a bunch of grown-ass women using a code name to discuss our ex over Asian noodles.

This was still just a glorified game of Clue, but soon we'd find out that we weren't the only ones trying to solve this murder mystery. I'm Carol Fisher, and from the teams at Novel and iHeartRadio, you're listening to The Girlfriends. Episode 5, The Best Job a Lawyer Could Have. Yes, I've got you.

Yes, I've got you. Bob married Janet on June 23, 1996, and it couldn't have been more different than his wedding to Gail. This time it was in Ithaca, New York, and instead of the dancing crowds of family and friends, there were less than a dozen people.

But I've since found out that going back to New York for the wedding was a very clever decision because it meant that Gail's death certificate, which had to be filed with the marriage license, was kept in the New York public record and wouldn't follow him to his new home, Minot, North Dakota.

Now your local weather with the KX News Storm Team. Welcome back and it is snowy, snowy, snowy out there. This sure looks like it's going to be a big one. Heaviest snow falling in Minot. To the uninitiated, Minot, North Dakota couldn't be further from the big lights of New York or Las Vegas. It's a small agricultural Midwest town close to the Canadian border. And yep, it is cold.

At the time, I didn't know much about Bob's life in North Dakota back in the 90s. I mean, there weren't all these resources that make it easy to cyber-stalk your ex. We couldn't keep tabs on Instagram or Facebook. So my producer, Anna, reached out to a bunch of local Facebook groups to see if anyone remembered Bob. I expected to get five or so people saying, oh, I've like heard about him.

But I actually got something crazy, like it was between 50 to 100 individual comments. There was this big camp of people who thought he was the best doctor that they'd ever worked with or ever been treated by. There was this one woman whose husband had injured his hand in a chainsaw injury and

And he was in so much pain that he went back to his German Russian dialect and was starting to speak and like mutter in German because he was obviously very distressed. And the wife said, oh, speak in English so that the doctor can understand you. And Bob goes, he's like, don't worry, I can speak German. And then does the rest of the consultation in German.

Well, right. He spoke five languages. I mean, it was part of the attraction of how smart he was. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. And what do they say about his marriage? Do they mention Janet? Yeah, I think the only things that people really said about the marriage were how he would bring her these flowers.

fresh homemade bagels because that was his whole thing he baked a lot of bagels in North Dakota apparently he was quite known for that he had to bring the Jewish heritage to North Dakota he was really establishing himself as the local Jew yeah yeah and he would drop them into her office and apparently she spoke about him with a lot of affection and he did the same so they seemed like a real unit

Wow, that's incredible. But I did speak to one woman on the phone, and I really want to play you this clip because she had a very specific and unique experience with Bob that I think speaks to what we've heard other people talk about when you're a patient of his or you're in care of another patient of his and his anger starts to come out. Oh, wow. Okay, I'm interested. Mm-hmm.

He was my son's plastic surgeon. My son was born with a cleft lip and palate. I remember one specific time my son had just had surgery. He was probably six months old. We were in the hospital and he came to check on us.

Why was he yelling at you?

Because my son was supposed to have arm braces on that kept their arms straight so they didn't pull at the stitches or pull at their lip. So I took those arm braces off and let him hold his own bottle. And it was very upsetting to him. One of the nurses was sitting at the nurse's station then and realized that he was yelling at me and came in and said, "That's enough. I think you need to leave now. We'll take care of it from here."

That sounds like Bob to a T. Highly unpredictable. Could go from, you know, zero to 100 in terms of anger. And very judgmental of people. So judgmental. There were quite a few people who said stuff like that. There was a woman who was going in for, I think, a breast reduction and...

he made her cry and I think you know the way some people rationalize that was that that's what doctors are like that's what doctors are like but I don't think that's true

I can't believe that you talked to all these people. So actually, I met up with a Minot local who was visiting London for a theater tour. And her name was Harriet Epstein. You met her? Yeah, I did. And she's Jewish? She is Jewish. Yeah, because that last name. And she got to know Bob after he started working in the same clinic as her husband. So they hung out a lot because of the medical community and the Jewish community. So here is a clip. It was just crazy.

Smart guy, you know, good doctor. But women found him creepy. I don't know what other adjective to use to describe him. You just got a creepy feeling when you would talk to him. And his eyes, it was sort of like he would look right through you kind of thing. Yeah, those piercing eyes. It was as if he could stare at you, but he wasn't connecting with you.

He was looking through you.

There was another similarity that you had with Harriet that I wanted to play you. It's something that she said that reminded me of something you said on your first date with Bob. Okay. I remember one time we were going to a function at the synagogue and he was helping me unload my car. And I said, oh, Bob, have you ever been married before? Because he was of the right age that maybe this was going to be a second marriage. And he said, no, I'm not.

And he said, why would you say that? It was a very visceral, immediate response. And I said, I don't know. I was just curious. And he just didn't respond. If there was nothing questionable about his previous marriage, you would have thought he would have said, yes, but my wife died, something like that. But he didn't. Well, that's crazy that she had that same experience.

And he had that same defensive, noncommittal answer. Yeah, he hadn't straightened it out. So did the community of Minot welcome him in with open arms?

Yeah, he was a big part of the flying community and he made bagels, which Harriet Epstein actually ran the only local bagel shop there. So they're really fulfilling the roles of the only two Jews pretty much in Minot, North Dakota. Oh, that is hysterical. Oh my gosh. Okay. From what I've learned, it seems like Bob really settled into this new stage of his life in Minot.

He contributed to the local paper, offering articles on how to avoid snowblower injuries. He even became the talk of the town after he performed emergency surgery on a young boy who was attacked by a tiger. Oh yes, you heard me right, a tiger. Apparently, it happened when the young boy and his family were posing for a photo with a tiger in a visiting exhibit at the North Dakota State Fair.

It was at the end of a long day, and the tiger lashed out, clawing the five-year-old's face. He was fine in the end, after Bob patched him up. But that's not the kind of content we were looking for. There was a period where there was a lull. Yeah, there was a big lull. And he was writing snowblower injuries in the Minot newspaper. And then there was nothing for a while. Oh.

Bob was living that good Midwestern life. He was married. He had a golden retriever. But back for us in Las Vegas, it felt like an era was over until the actual detectives showed up.

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Go to 80dayobsession.com. That's 80dayobsession.com. Being a homicide prosecutor is probably the best job a lawyer could ever have, in my view. Meet Daniel Bibb and his partner, Stephen Sirocco. Steve and I, we were friends when I first started. We're still friends today. We're just knock-around kind of guys.

Dan and Steve headed up the Manhattan DA's cold case homicide unit together, and they are everything you want two homicide prosecutors to be.

Dan is a huge guy, easily 6'7", and built to own it. He's got a thick, serious mustache that's designed to strain Italian wedding soup and cop bistros all around the West Village. And Steve, well, he's about as New York as it gets. Half Italian, half Irish, but a little smaller than Dan. I'm not a shrimp. I'm like 5'9", but this guy is a monster.

They formed their new cold case unit in 1996, which meant that Dan and Steve could come out of the usual grind of active homicide cases around the city. They were living the dream. It was like working with my best friend. We could work with the detectives that we wanted to work with. We could refuse cases if we wanted them. We could pick and choose. And we picked a lot of good ones and picked some lemons, too.

When you're dealing with old cases, you end up with a lot of witnesses dotted around the country. And so Dan and Steve traveled extensively to interview people on cases, people who'd often aged and retired to warmer states, which must have been really hard. We were in Florida so much that I got to be good friends with the concierge at the Royal Palm Crown Plaza in South Beach. We found hotels that 18 holes of golf was included in the room rate.

You know, I'm not staying at Motel 6. A pool, a beach, a golf course, a casino to play poker, and steaks. We like to have three-hour lunches. We like to have a cocktail after work. And we like investigating homicides. Dan and Steve were getting a reputation as people who win cold cases. So the DA's chief investigator, Andrew Rosenzweig, decided to bring them something personal.

a case that had been weighing heavy on his conscience. Gail Katz Bierenbaum. Andy led the DA's original investigation into Gail's disappearance from 1986 to 87, and he had become totally convinced that Bob was responsible for her death. Though we couldn't mount a case against him, he concluded that Bob was the most dangerous man he had ever known,

With only a couple years left before retirement, it was now or never. He came into my office one day and put a box on the table containing all the paperwork of the Birnbaum case and said, why don't you and Dan take a look at this and see if it can go someplace? He said, it's a missing persons case. There's no body. I know what you're thinking. The torso. We'll get to it. Hold tight. Hold tight.

And both Steve and I looked at Andy and said, you know, Andy, those cases are really, really hard to do. And we agreed to review the case. We picked up a file. I took some of the material home that night to review. The thing that struck me, it would strike anybody, you don't have to be a homicide investigator, and there is a, what's called a DD-5. A DD-5 is a detective bureau case.

document that synopsizes an interview. And there's an interview with Dr. Birnbaum's psychiatrist, Dr. Michael Stone. And Dr. Michael Stone was so upset with his session with his patient, Dr. Birnbaum, that he's required to fire off a letter to Gail that she is in danger and should get out of the house. It's called a Tarasov letter.

This was the mysterious letter that Gail told Denise and Elaine about, the one she was going to use to manipulate Bob into getting a divorce. That evening, I cold called Dr. Stone, fully expecting him to say, well, you know, I can't really discuss this. And I said, I reviewed some documents here, and it appears to me that Gail Katz was murdered and that your patient, Dr. Berenbaum, probably killed her.

He said, and I pretty much quote, Then I figured I think we should take a closer look at this.

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By 1998, Gayle's sister Elaine Katz had become a very successful family lawyer.

She had two kids, a husband, and a nice house out in Westchester. I don't want to say she had moved on, but her life just couldn't revolve around Bob anymore. And then she got a call. The phone rang, and my secretary said it's the district attorney's office. And I said to myself, oh, crap. One of my clients got in trouble. But I answered the phone, and it's Andy Rosenzweig.

And although I might have chosen not to think about these things, it took me a half a second to realize it was on the phone. And I will never forget him saying, "We have a cold case bureau in the DA's office, and we've had a lot of success, and I'd like to open up Gail's case." And I mentioned, you know, the torso, and I'll never forget him saying, "What torso?" So, the body was found in Staten Island.

That made it a Staten Island investigation, apparently. Staten Island Police Department? Another borough of the City of New York? Didn't talk to the Manhattan Police Department? And the medical examiner of the City of New York? Didn't talk to the police department or the district attorneys? No, they didn't. So Andy and his assistant came up to see me.

We went through my files. I had the autopsies. I had all of the records. And they began the process of reinvestigation. Andy Rosenzweig wouldn't retire without getting him, without at least trying.

Andy took up the role of investigator again. He was responsible for finding early leads and handing over investigative information to Dan and Steve, who would then build the case towards prosecution. It wasn't going to be easy. Opening a cold case comes with some really clear obstacles, like fading memories, dead witnesses, or a lack of fresh forensic evidence.

But there are multiple reasons why Dan and Steve had much better odds solving this case a decade later. Attitudes towards domestic violence and how to police it were changing dramatically, which was making prosecuting domestic violence cases easier, even cold cases. Take that time when Gail went to the police station and reported that Bob had strangled her after he caught her smoking.

That police report sat in a file cabinet. This is 1985. Domestic violence wasn't a big deal, unfortunately. If that happened in 2022, that police report, that complaint report would have made its way to a detective. Barmbound would have been arrested the next day.

But the awareness of domestic violence and the cycle of domestic violence certainly didn't exist in 1985. When somebody went into a precinct

made a complaint like that when there weren't necessarily dedicated domestic violence police officers who would take the complaint or follow up on it, it would sort of languish there. This is Cindy Knisher. She joined the Manhattan DA's office as a prosecutor in 1988, a year after Andy shelved Gail's case. The problem was domestic violence cases are not

Exactly like your run-of-the-mill other cases. The complaining witnesses or the victims that you're working with are dealing with trauma and dealing with history of violence and dealing with so many other things in their lives going on as a result of the abuse that are very different than the average crime victim. I've thought a lot about how you become Gail or someone like her.

When things are clearly so toxic, so violent, why don't you just walk away? When is enough enough? But I know it's never that easy. You already know that I stayed longer than I should have. And Gail, she did try to alert her situation to the police, but she wasn't listened to. And that is not her fault. I don't think that...

The cases were getting the attention and being handled the way that was best for the victims. And layered on that is, historically, women who came and made complaints of sexual assault or domestic violence were looked at as women who were scorned or making it up or, you know, wanted to get money. And, I mean, some of that still exists today, right? But I do think it's rooted in that.

Then in 1994, Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act, putting $1.6 billion towards the investigation and prosecution of violent crimes against women. It was the year Nicole Brown Simpson was violently killed and the case against her husband, the football player O.J. Simpson, riveted the nation. Little by little, the public's understanding of domestic violence was changing.

While it wasn't perfect, things also started to improve within the justice system. Police departments got training on how to deal with spousal abuse. DA offices around the country introduced victim impact prosecutors, attorneys who were specially trained to deal with domestic violence cases. And with all that going on, there was a feeling in the late 90s that maybe Gail's case would go differently if it was given another go.

So Dan and Steve started with the basics, looking over the files in detail, getting in touch with key witnesses from the past, and booking luxury hotels in the gambling capital of America. Next time, New York comes to Las Vegas and our investigations collide.

When you pick up a cold case, the first thing you do is you redo everything that's been done in the past. And that's what we did. I think he was engaged to like three or four different women in Las Vegas. He dated the entire Jewish professional community. We interviewed every single one of the girlfriends out in Las Vegas. She said there's just something wrong with him. She actually accused him of killing Gail and he remained silent forever.

He never mentioned that he had rented that plane that afternoon. After a string of curses, I said to them, you have ripped the shred of closure that I have away from me. The Girlfriends is produced by Novel for iHeartRadio. For more from Novel, visit novel.audio. The series is hosted by me, Carol Fisher, and produced by Anna Sinfield. Yeah!

Our assistant producer is Julian Manu Gara Patton. And our researcher is Madeline Parr. The editor is Veronica Simmons. Max O'Brien is our executive producer. Our fact checker is Valeria Rocha. Production management from Cherie Houston and Charlotte Wolfe. Sound design, mixing, and scoring by Daniel Kempson and Nicholas Alexander.

Music supervision by Anna Sinfield. Original music composed by Louisa Gerstein. Story development by Isaac Fisher. Willard Foxton is creative director of development. Special thanks to Sean Glynn, David Waters, Mithily Rao, Katrina Norvell, David Wasserman, and Bethann Macaluso.

We did reach out to Bob and his legal team to ask if he'd like to comment on the podcast, but we never heard back. Novel.

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Did you know your life insurance is an asset you can sell? I'm Jay Jackson, CEO of Abacus Life. For almost 20 years, Abacus has been purchasing life insurance policies from seniors just like you. And at abacuspays.com, we've created a free policy value calculator so you can find out the worth of your policy in just seconds. There are no fees and no obligations. Get real value from your life insurance when you need it with Abacus. Learn more at abacuspays.com.

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